combating terrorism and its implications for the security sector - DCAF

nam and, it may be argued, both before and after. The U.S. Army was a
“big war” army and gained its kudos from that fact. 67 It was there to
protect the American people from major foreign foes and to do it
quickly and without equivocation, using whatever level of force was
necessary. The slow, restrained, and patient grind against flexible,
adroit, small-scale opponents that epitomised traditional COIN techniques
did not sit well with this army. Specifically in the early 1960s,
there was an actual fear within the U.S. Army hierarchy of a “de-emphasis
of military means or offensive operations against the VC” being
the first steps on a rocky road toward being an army that could not
fight the nation’s wars and which could not gain the nation’s respect. 68
In essence, this was an army that did not want to become a police force.
Gen Lyman Lemnitzer (the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) was
one who was certainly concerned and took action (back in 1961) to
stop any imitation of British methods by U.S. troops in Southeast
Asia. 69
Come the 1970s and Northern Ireland, it was clear that the British
Army had taken aboard the salutary lessons provided by the employment
of too great a degree of force. However, even given the army’s
minimum force philosophy, the regiments that came to the Province 70
had to adjust to a situation—in the United Kingdom itself—that was
“very different.” 71 A degree of nuance was required that had not been
heretofore necessary. The army initially had gone in as peacekeeper essentially
to defend the Catholic population from Protestant pogroms
and to keep the two sides apart. However, while initially being greeted
as “saviours” by the Catholic population, mistakes made by the army
ensured that this Catholic support changed fairly quickly into outright
hostility. 72 The army, in the early 1970s, in its search for weapons had
erred in searching Catholic homes but not Protestant ones; had interned
67 See Russell Weighley, The American Way of War: A History of U.S. Strategy
and Policy (Chicago: Indiana University Press, 1973).
68 Komer, Bureaucracy at War, 105.
69 Ibid., 46.
70 Fifteen infantry regiments saw active service in Borneo (1962–1966—not counting
eight Gurkha), at least twelve were committed to the situation in Aden
(1964–1967), and five had experience of riot control in Guyana (1962–1964)
and one in Hong Kong (1967).
71 Peter Taylor, Brits: The War Against the IRA (London: Bloomsbury, 2001), 32.
The habit, for instance, of shooting the ringleader could not be continued in
Ulster. Even before deployments to the Province, this tactic was being called
into disrepute since a single 7.62 round fired in a riot in Guyana in 1964 had
killed three people and injured another. See Dewar, Brush Fire Wars, 62; and
Charles Messenger, For Love of Regiment: A History of British Infantry (London:
Leo Cooper, 1996), 185.
72 See James, Imperial Rearguard, 217; and 32.
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